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"Just Doing My Job" is a GREAT excuse, in the vast majority of cases, if you are a soldier, policeman, fireman, whatnot.

The idea that someone in one of those positions should, on a regular basis be ALLOWED to substitute their "judgment" for their job is absurd. Institutions like the police and army, HAVE to do their job, even (especially!) when they find that job distasteful or even mildly wrong, because if they didn't, if a private, or a beat cop, or whoever got to willy nilly substitue their judgment for that of their CO, or of the law as it stands, in ANYTHING but the most outrageous situations, those institutions would entirely cease to function, as institutions, and you would get not the rule of Law, but the rule of Thugs.

In VERY EXTREME cases, "just doing my job" doesn't cut it, post Nuremberg. But in run of the mill cases (and arresting someone for breaking the law, even a silly, or wrong (in the eyes of cop/soldier) law is very run of the mill) "just doing my job" is needful.

An anonymous reader writes "I found myself yelling at the TV over a broadcast this morning by KNBC Los Angeles. The story is here. The article talks about how the Glendale Police Department cannot believe that Mercedes-Benz of America is refusing to comply with an order they obtain to help find the driver of a hit and run accident.
What the web version of the story does not say was what the Glendale police department was asking Mercedes-Benz to do was to turn on the the car's GPS tracking system so that they could help locate the suspect.
I say kudos to Mercedes-Benz of America for refusing to do so."

drewtheman (1127999) writes "According to this interview with Dr Robert Lustig, Professor of Pediatric Endocrinology from University of California, San Francisco, the fructose, once touted as diabetic friendly because it doesn't raise your insulin directly, could be a major culprit for the obesity epidemic, high blood pressure and elevated blood levels of LDL. The fructose constitute 50% of table sugar and up to 90% of HFCS, both found in high quantity in most prepared foods. And if it was not the fat that makes you fat?"Link to Original Source

An anonymous reader writes "PHP today announced the end of life of version 4, with support continuing until the end of the year and critical security patches continuing until August 8, 2008. There will be no more releases of version 4.4. PHP notes today is the third anniversary of the release of PHP 5 and that PHP 6 is soon on the way. PHP recommends developers spend the rest of the year updating applications to run on PHP 5, and offers a migration guide."Link to Original Source

An anonymous reader writes "Today it is exactly three years ago since PHP 5 has been released. In
those three years it has seen many improvements over PHP 4. PHP 5 is
fast, stable & production-ready and as PHP 6 is on the way, PHP 4
will be discontinued.

The PHP development team hereby announces that support for PHP 4 will
continue until the end of this year only. After 2007-12-31 there will be no
more releases of PHP 4.4. We will continue to make critical security fixes
available on a case-by-case basis until 2008-08-08. Please use the rest of
this year to make your application suitable to run on PHP 5.

yfarren writes "Well, here is a site aiming to make the DC Madame's phone list searchable. Other than it just being funny, what do people think about this, given our mood for discussing privacy, and holding politicians accountable. Are politicians entiteled to any privacy? Is a site like this an invasion of their privacy? Are their visits with a sex workers really related to their Job Performance? Should that change the way we think about them, when they make laws about Iraq, or the internet? What about their stands on things like gay marriage?"Link to Original Source

"Windows Vista includes an extensive reworking of core OS elements in order toprovide content protection for so-called "premium content", typically HD datafrom Blu-Ray and HD-DVD sources. Providing this protection incursconsiderable costs in terms of system performance, system stability, technicalsupport overhead, and hardware and software cost. These issues affect notonly users of Vista but the entire PC industry, since the effects of theprotection measures extend to cover all hardware and software that will evercome into contact with Vista, even if it's not used directly with Vista (forexample hardware in a Macintosh computer or on a Linux server). This documentanalyses the cost involved in Vista's content protection, and the collateraldamage that this incurs throughout the computer industry"

Lesson: If you want your graphics to be of the highest quality, your digital imaging to be top notch, then don't use Vista because it will degrade them in order to protect premium content and there's nothing you can do about it (other than go to OSX or Linux).